TAKE MY REVOLUTION

Not to advocate violence or anything but there Is some merit to the idea that if you Govern Badly then the people will be mad at you and there will be consequences like I feel politicians get away with a lot these days....... posts that increase my background check

Same reason I think unions should go back to being straight up gangs. People wouldn't have to beg governments for minimum wage increases if every once in a while employers had to stop and consider "how likely am I to get my kneecaps bashed in by my workers because of this?" before making a decision.

teruki, the walking pantene commercial 

Language is difficult for conservatives.

They know, they're not dumb, and they don't actually care about pronouns. They just want you to share their message by any means to amplify what they're actually implying which, in this instance, is that trans people are ungodly and against the Bible. They're dog whistling to like-minded others who might also be perusing your feed. Don't underestimate them and don't spread their message; even if you think you're dunking on them, you're just boosting their reach and numbers. Don't fall for it.

chiakana…………

starting to think i’m unfit for human relationships all together. laugh out loud

babygirl I know video game lore you wouldn't even care about

some kind of a moodboard

I feel like in a way “serial killers are geniuses” is just part of police propaganda because it sounds way better than “we are fucking lazy and a lot of serial killers know that and target people who we don’t care about because of racism and classism”. 

More often than not, the killers’ “genius” is far far FAR outweighed by police incompetence and indifference.

I always think of the green River killer who targeted sex workers cos he knew no one would care and he was basically correct. “I thought I could kill as many as I want and no one would notice” and they didn’t care til he started targeting non sex workers. That’s not genius that’s just society hating SWs yet again

I can not stress this enough, former representative Dave Richert made his political career on “catching the Green River Killer” but he actually obstructed the investigation for 20 years because he refused to investigate the white killer and instead went after innocent Black men.

This is also when we bring up that the Zodiac Killer, you know, THAT GUY, one of, if not THE MOST notorious unsolved serial killer case. The one that’s often depicted and talked about as if he was some recluse whose genius drove him mad enough to commit heinous crimes and leave CODED MESSAGES to police.

Yeah, remember when he, in a stroke of complete evil mastery, killed a taxi driver in broad daylight in the middle of a residential area and (obviously) someone who happened to be looking out the window witnessed it? Remember how the witness called the cops immediately and described the killer as a white man and because of a whoopsie daisies mistake the cops were sent out with an order to look for a black man? And then they drove by a white man that matched the witness’ description EXACTLY and was walking away from the EXACT CORNER the murder took place and they didnt even bat an eye because well they were looking for a black guy?

And do you remember the real ringer?? that he was 100% without a doubt the Zodiac because he literally mentioned this encounter in his next coded letter to police??

yeah.

Academically speaking, I still find the whole “anti-shipper” movement to be fascinating from a sociological perspective.

You have what amounts to a extremist purity cult whose beliefs align nearly precisely with those of Conservative American Christianity in terms of sexual purity politics (admittedly with some additional flourishes that I’ve watched develop in real time), but is mostly composed of minority members whose sexual-and-gender identities are opposed and oppressed by Conservative American Christianity.  Additionally, their tactics also mirror religious pro-censorship groups (such as Warriors For Innocence), but their rhetoric is entirely secularized and derived from leftist theory.

Did they arrive at this structure via convergent evolution?  Via socially dominant concepts in the greater socio-cultural space that they occupy?  I doubt it was by direct emulation but the possibility does exist on some levels.

I’m literally doing my sociology research paper on them right now.

Ooh? Go on.

It’s a qualitative study looking at the ways that Tumblr antis define the word “pedophilia”. It’s pretty interesting stuff because the definitions are so unique to Tumblr anti culture. I’ll have to go through my coding more thoroughly, but I think I’ve broken them down into four categories:

1. Legality based arguments where they’re very stuck on the idea of Age of Majority. Usually these people believe that it’s pedophilia if an 18 year old dates a 17 year old because they view age 18 as a hard and fast line from childhood to adulthood.

2. Psychological-readiness based arguments are a lot more subjective. These people often use arguments about differing life stages as a reason to call something pedophilia. Some even bust out that “peoples brains don’t fully age until 25” factoid. For this group, age gaps are a real no-go, even if both partners are legally consenting adults. The acceptablity of age gaps varied.

3. Physical appearance based arguments are focused against people who like young looking or young acting characters, even if those characters are adults. These people define pedophilia as an attraction to the perception of youth. This belief is strongly correlated with anti-DD/LG posting.

4. I’m having trouble naming the fourth category. It’s based around an argument of sneaky pedophilia or maybe an uncovering of the fan creators hidden desires? These antis argue that aging up characters past canon ages and shipping them is pedophilia because they believe that the shipper REALLY wanted to ship the child but didn’t because they were worried it wasn’t socially acceptable. In this instance, the character is portrayed as an adult by fandom and there is nothing childish in their appearance or mannerism. Because the character was depicted as a child in canon, however, the anti believes that the character must always be depicted that way in fandom and that only tricky pedophiles would be interested in exploring that character’s future.

Similarly, I noticed a newer trend of calling adult ships between people who canonically knew each other as children/teens to be called pedophilia or at the very least jailbaity, predatory behaviour. This is particularly true when the characters are a couple years apart. The idea there is that, if they knew each other as children, they’d never be able to see each other as adults. So if they have sex as adults, they’re mentally thinking of the child version of their partner and are therefore a pedophile. I wonder if this is a projection of the beliefs from #4. Perhaps it is the antis who, once introduced to a child/teen, are never able to see them as anything but a child and therefore they believe that everyone else must feel the same? That’s only a guess. I only saw this one a handful of times and it was all pretty recently, so I didn’t include it in the data for my paper. It does seem to indicate a level of escalation in these definitions though. I’ll have to check in again at a later date and see if it sticks around.

I’ve seen all of those as well, and I’d be fascinated to see your results when you’re published.

As for names for the fourth category, can I suggest Canonical Stasis arguments?  As in, “the characters are forever frozen at the ages that they are presented”.

This is fascinating.

Infuriating as always, but fascinating.

Maybe I’m just new to the particular depths of this discourse but I’ve recently found out about criticisms of some ships that has cross-pollination between types 2 and 4 in defining ships as incestuous because characters are “sibling coded”??

Reminds me strongly of the Reylo antis who insist that Reylo is shipping pedophilia because of the age difference between the actors.

(also repeating the purity spiral - can’t let the teens be alone unsupervised, if Sally and Bobby are left unattended they might develop pantsfeels and since they’ve been friends since childhood that would be inappropriate and therefore must be prevented)

There was a point in time when TV Tropes banned entries about an NSFW Tangled fic. The fic was about adults who are canonically married, but because the target audience for Tangled was children, the fic was considered “pedo porn.”

I don’t know if canonical statis necessarily explains #4. #4 (and really all of them, but especially #4) seems to be reflective of this idea that “monsters” have very specific characteristics, tastes, and values - that you can always spot a monster using various tells. And if they dare do something like what #4 suggests, they are hiding those tells, so they are extra monstrous. There is likely a very real anxiety around not being able to tell offhand who is safe and who isn’t, about predators that hide in the midst. “You never know who you’re talking to on the internet!!! They may be GROOMING YOU!!” This may seem to be an attempt at unmasking these predators, these monsters - but, as someone who’s had the misfortune of knowing such monsters first-hand, it’s not particularly effective.

I was originally thinking something similar. That’s why I had written it down as “sneaky pedophile” at first. lol Upon further reflection, however, I think that canonical stasis is more accurate. That pedophiles have specific tells and that aging up is an attempt to subvert those tells is the argument. The underlying belief for that to work, however, is that canonical ages must remain static. Otherwise the argument falls apart. 

That is similar to the reason I went with a psychological readiness label for #2. Originally I had just put down “age gaps”, but age gap only encompasses the argument. The underlying belief for the problematic elements of age gaps is that one partner is psychologically/emotionally unready for the relationship. This strikes at the core of the concern, which is the perceived power imbalance between the partners. This power imbalance is then sometimes conflated with pedophilia. Age gaps are just one of the ways this is expressed. Other arguments in a similar vein are that the characters are in differing life stages or that the characters brain is not yet fully developed (some psychological studies suggest that the human brain is still developing up until age 25, so some people argue that people under 25 are still too young for relationships with older adults).

The paper is done! Check out my Tumblr post for the link!

op and all the comments on this post have brain worms

Gotta love how they just respond with insults.  And by “love”, I mean “time to block another one.”

Really looking forward to all this. I also wanted to add a very subtle way in which these mindsets have also started to affect real life people / influence how puritanical antis have started to view the world: the weird insistence I started to get to a funny old story that in denying my supposed “victimization” between my adult self and another adult, I was supporting the perpetuation of pedophilia. I scened with an older guy at a BDSM club, including sexual activity. Afterwards, the guy’s friend and the host of the party came up to me and asked, “Hey, did anyone check your ID at the door? You look so young, I want to make sure you’re safe.” I do look very young - I’m on a fast track to thirty and people still ask me what grade I’m in - so I’m used to stuff like this. This was a generally funny moment for me, and I had a good time that night. The closest thing to duplitious intent I could imagine of those men is the typical “implying a woman looks young to flatter her” cliche - and to be honest, I fully expect that was basically happening here, since BDSM communities tend to have a culture of safety, with a built-in way for interrupting scenes if someone might be in danger (i.e. safewords, DM’s, etc.) But what frustrated me about telling this cute story online was how people started to say that these guys must be pedophiles, because if I really look so young, then what does it say about them that they enjoyed sexual activity with me? This was a real life instance of people projecting those last two types of pedophilia definitions onto me. In theory, if this were pedophilia, I would be the “victim”, both for being chronologically younger than these men, and for looking so significantly younger. It’s particularly infuriating because their worldview is effectively punishing me for appearing the wrong age - which is typical of misogynistic and patriarchal ideals of feminine appearance. Women must be punished for looking the “wrong” age, and while we normally see this as woman being devalued for appearing older than the ‘ideal woman’, this also certainly felt like an instance of being punished for appearing younger than the ‘ideal woman’. Under this logic, I, a 100% consenting adult, can never have sexual activity with anyone, ever. Any actual adult who participates with me is only doing so out of a secret desire to have sex with a child and using me as a substitute, so even if we’re both enthusiastically consenting adults, I’m perpetuating or enabling pedophilia. Meanwhile, if I were to have sexual activity with someone who actually is the chronological age I appear as, they would be minors and thus I would be the predator. The growth of purity culture in fandom, on Tumblr, and the social media world in general is starting to influence how people view real world sexual activity - and the real life people having it.

I feel like there is a degree of assumption of good faith given to antis here that is not deserved.

The general assumption I am seeing be made is that antis start at a definition of pedophilia and go forward from that - that they check against one or more predefined definitions of pedophilia and if one or more of the definitions fits then that is where they have a problem.

I think in many, many cases it is the opposite. An individual experiences a reaction of disgust, assumes their reaction of disgust is an objective assessment of a problem, and then put into words the reason for their disgust. Having put the offensive into words they assign that “pedophilia” to create a moral justification for their disgust. These ‘accepted’ definitions of pedophilia then get picked up by people to explain why their disgust is objective truth, conflicting ideas pile on top of each other and are cherry picked to suit their purposes in any given situation.

I feel like this more accurately describes anti behavior. A given ship or behavior is disliked, and so one of the definitions of pedophilia is forcibly applied or a new definition invented if one does not exist.

Basically, the core belief is not in any of these definitions of pedophilia. The core belief is that their gut reactions are reflective of objective truth. This is why the behavior patterns of antis are virtually identical to Conservative American Christianity and sexual purity cults while their justifications are built around progressive language. Judging righteousness by gut reaction is a core Conservative American Christianity teaching. The idea is pervasive through our Christianity dominated culture (both secular and religious). You tell what is right not by well reasoned ethical and moral principles but by gut reactions (aka the spirit of god, a conscience, etc.)

What is more, all of this constitutes well understood behavior patterns followed by many groups under many circumstances. Racists being disgusted by the intermingling of races, homophobes being disgusted by gay people, terfs being disgusted with trans people. The pattern of behavior and underlying motivation is always the same, and various justifications are given after the fact by every group. And it is particularly telling that in virtually every case concerns about pedophilia are cited.

Antis, their behavior patterns, and their obsession with using an ever widening definition of pedophilia as a justification for their behavior is pretty much standard for any moral panic. Their justifications are slightly modified in self serving ways, as is the case for all moral panic driven groups.

@nyxelestia I just had something similar happen to me with porn abolitionists insisting my ability to consent is compromised because I have PTSD and that therefore I cannot enjoy sex and should not have it. So there’s ableism bred into these views as well.

Honestly, as someone who is 20 years old and looks like I’ve only just hit puberty, if I wasn’t aroace and was in a sexual/romantic relationship with someone, I can definitely see people judging anyone that would want that kind of relationship with me. Heck, back when I was an anti, I sort of believed that people who would hypothetically be interested in me were pretty suspect because I look so young

It’s okay to be uncomfortable with age gaps and the like, and it’s okay to be uncomfortable with certain interpretations of characters. What’s not okay is harassing people over it. Just because you’re triggered or squicked out, that doesn’t mean you’re in the right

You can’t just assume people are closet pedos/racists/homophobes/abusers/bigots based on what fictional content they enjoy. The assumption that enjoying something in fiction that doesn’t come with a big flashing disclaimer that the author does not condone [insert horrible thing] irl

And even then, that’s not enough

“What is more, all of this constitutes well understood behavior patterns followed by many groups under many circumstances. Racists being disgusted by the intermingling of races, homophobes being disgusted by gay people, terfs being disgusted with trans people. The pattern of behavior and underlying motivation is always the same, and various justifications are given after the fact by every group. And it is particularly telling that in virtually every case concerns about pedophilia are cited.”

@luckyladylily you have opened my third eye, i had noticed the pedophilia accusations in these cases separately but never correlated them

The reason why pedophilia is always the cited concern is because it gets people to shut their brain off. We all agree child sexual abuse is a huge evil. We all agree that “something must be done” about child sexual abuse. People have an extremely strong emotional response to the idea. These movements hijack that emotional response to push their agenda.

Accuse gay people of being pedophiles and the need to prevent child sexual abuse becomes so urgent in people’s mind that you cannot risk it. If there is even a risk that supporting the “gay agenda” will increase child sexual abuse then people will violently oppose wide spread acceptance of homosexuality even when though the claim is based on absolutely no evidence. And then it becomes “common knowledge” that queer people are inherently pedophilic.

This method of turning public opinion against queer people has been used to great success all over the world. The Soviet Union famously cited pedophilia concerns as their reason for imprisonment of gay men, and a similar tactic was used at the same time in the USA and England to justify imprisonment and forced sterilization.

Anti’s use the same process. For example, claim that shipping of age differences will cause pedophilia and something as unimportant as shipping must be opposed for even the chance that it will bring about any CSA. The claim alone is enough to get people on your side even without any evidence.

This is crucial, because that evidence does not exist for any of these claims. Not necessarily because it is almost certainly false, actual research into the subject is shockingly thin due to consistent opposition to research into CSA prevention. The people who consistently oppose this research are the same moral purity groups that frequently cite concerns of pedophilia to demonize people they despise. Incident rates, criminality rates, common conditions under which CSA occurs, effective methods of prevention, trying to research any of it will have an organization drowning in controversy and accusations of “supporting pedophilia”. The mere suggestion that there may be something to do besides or in addition to their pushed solution of hunting, imprisoning, and killing suspected pedophiles is seen as a threat.

With moral purity groups universally using pedophilia as a justification, and often their primary and only justification, I find it very difficult to see any other possibility than the obvious conclusion that they care more about preserving their excuse than preventing child sexual abuse.

Relevant to this would be two sections in particular of an article I wrote, specifically “Defending the innocents” and “Moral Panic”. Below, a few selected excerpts: 

.

In fact, despite its singular placement against the backdrop of the First Amendment, obscenity law remains important, and it is still used today as one of the few legal tools available to criminalize speech that is otherwise consensual and/or private. The existence or not of a victim is not even necessary, as moral crimes are considered of immediate effect to the soul, and said victim can be made up on the spot. 

One such very common victim is, of course, the child. Who, if not the most innocent and helpless, is the perfect subject to call for the immediate indignation of the community, ready to do whatever it takes to protect the most vulnerable members of our society?

“Think of the children” has long since become a recurrent slogan whenever there’s a need to motivate restricting the liberties of adults and marginalized groups (children included), by evoking moral authority and using a rhetorical tool that effectively corners the opponent in a moral bind.

[…]

And if there’s one thing that “Think of the children” has done, it is giving people an easier scapegoat to redirect their fears and frustrations against a target that they have the power to denounce, differently from the historical direction of censorship coming from the higher class against the lower, lacking in power and resources. Where censorship punches down, the blind, moral concern for the corrupted youth gives virtual power to the mass to punch horizontally, down to someone sitting even lower than them, and occasionally even upward against the higher class.

[…]

Examples of this are the panic over comic books in the 50s (an emblematic case, the book Seduction Of The Innocent, arguing that comic books were a direct cause of juvenile delinquency), the satanic panic of the 80s, the panic over violent video games in the 90s, the panic over the “trans agenda” of the past few years, together with “punching-up” conspiracies like Pizzagate and QAnon. They are all deeply concerned for the youth and the vulnerable, all have a very specific target supposedly responsible for the child abuse they are perceiving, and all are characterized by an impressive amount of disinterest toward more empirically accurate assessments of types of child abuse and how to prevent them.

The level of disinterest and plain detachment from the work that should be put in to actually make a change even suggests that the child victim is really just a symbol in a social phenomenon that, at closer inspection, is not about them. It’s not about the child. It’s about the idea of the perfect childhood being the canary in the coal mine of a morally traditional and just society:

Moral panics today, like witch hunts in the past, help define the Other so that the community gathers tighter and in stronger solidarity with the (re)confirmed moral norms that give “the rest of the community some sense of their own territorial identity.” 

.

Filter this through micro-communities closed in echo-chambered socmed bubbles where there is a strong need to define one’s own identity to participate and have value in the group. Socmeds that push and enforce that affirmation of identity through the activity of fighting against (the idea of) someone else, which is then rewarded with popularity and positive engagement from the in-group. 

I am so fucking sick of CGI this, CGI that. give me back on location filming (when possible), give me back intricate hauntingly realistic animatronics and puppets, give me back handmade props & masks & skillful make up……..just give me back practical effects I am begging

Give me back films made by unionized workers who can collectively bargain for better working conditions the way digital VFX artists currently can't

does hatsune miku qualify as a fictional character or is she real. like it's different from, say, gorillaz, cause her entire thing is that she's a robot/computer program/what have you, and also she isn't an alter ego for one specific artist. so by being canonically digital in her lore and also the same thing in real life i don't think she is fictional. my point is when you play games that feature her she is actually talking to you like you are conversing face to face with the actual real hatsune miku and not just her likeness

The hard truth about autism acceptance that a lot of people don't want to hear is that autism acceptance also inherently requires acceptance of people who are just weird.

And yes, I mean Those TM people. Middle schoolers who growl and bark and naruto run in the halls. Thirtysomethings who live with their parents. Furries. Fourteen-year-olds who identify as stargender and use neopronouns. Picky eaters. Adults in fandoms. People who talk weird. People who dress weird.

Because autistic people shouldn't have to disclose a medical diagnosis to you to avoid being mocked and ostracized for stuff that, at absolute worst, is annoying. Ruthlessly deriding people for this stuff then tacking on a "oh, but it's okay if they're autistic" does absolutely nothing to help autistic people! Especially when undiagnosed autistic people exist.

Like it or not, if you want to be an ally to autistic people, you're going to have to take the L and leave eccentric, weird people alone. Even if you don't know them to be autistic. You shouldn't be looking for Acceptable Reasons to be mean to people in the first place. Being respectful should be the default.

This reminds me of that global warming comic, like

This is so important to me..

I FUCKING HATE THAT I GREW UP WITH THE GOOD INTERNET I HATE THAT I REMEMBER GOOGLE SEARCHING A TERM AND FINDING OUT EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS I HATE THAT I REMEMBER WELL DESIGNED WEBSITES MADE FOR EASY VIEW AND NOT TO BOMB YOU WITH ADS I HATE THAT I REMEMBER WHEN APPS WERE TRYING TO BE THEIR BEST AND NOT TO SELL THE MOST I HATE HOW CAPITALISM AFFECTS EVERYTHING AROUND ME AND I HATE THAT I CAN SEE IT SO CLEARLY IN HOW IT AFFECTS THE INTERNET